The Whirlwind.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Matas adds another good title to her already impressive body of juvenile historical fiction dealing with the Holocaust. Beginning his story in June 1942, in Seattle, WA, Benjamin Friedman, 14, immediately takes readers back to Berlin, Germany, on November 14, 1938, the day he turned 11 and he and all his fellow Jewish students were expelled from their school by Nazi edict. This anti-Semitic incident was just one of many in the whirlwind of Benjamin’s life which led to his parents’ decision to emigrate to the United States.

After arriving in Seattle in August 1941, Benjamin begins school where he befriends John Ogawa, an American of Japanese descent. However, following the December 7, 1941, attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, America enters the war, and both the Ogawas and the Friedmans find themselves identified as enemy aliens. When John’s family is relocated to an internment camp and Benjamin encounters increasing anti-Semitism at school, he fears that what Jews had experienced in Germany is about to be repeated in America, a place he had thought safe.

Teachers adopting The Whirlwind for classroom study will need to provide support materials as Matas packs a large amount of information and many issues into this brief novel. For readers with limited knowledge of the Second World War, Matas offers a closing four-page Historical Note plus a recommended reading list about enemy aliens’ war experiences. Given today’s “war on terrorism,” where fear of “foreigners” has once again led to nations’ willingness to erode personal freedoms, The Whirlwind’s historical contents definitely address the present. Recommended.